15.1 Father Among Us

God designed mankind to possess all authority but no power, so that humans would work together with God to see all things intended accomplished by His Spirit. It is the same with Love. God designed mankind to possess the authority to love, but He gave to humans no power to love.

Now, humans can work alone, out from their own strength, just as they can love alone, out from their own passions. Nonetheless, both human strength and human love go awry and turn out to be little more than self for self. God alone is Love. For me to love you, I must have the Father between us as all our connections together.

The Appearance of God. When God said through John that we cannot “love” Him if we do not love our brothers and sisters as well, He did not mean for us to “try harder.” God meant for us to despair of ourselves, that we might have Him alone be that Love among us, entirely through faith.

As we saw, the inward core of the Proof of Christ faithful and true is when we KNOW that we belong inside of God and God belongs inside of us. That word “KNOW” is Christ fulfilled. But the outward appearance of the Proof that God is telling us the Truth is Christians loving one another. Indeed, Christians loving one another is the revelation of God, what God looks like, the only appearance of God that creation will ever see.

How Do We Love One Another? And so the question, “How do we love one another,” which is the title of this chapter, could also be asked in this way. – What does God look like? Christians loving one another is the appearance, the only appearance, of God.

Christians have never loved one another in all the history of the Church. You, dear reader, have never participated in reciprocal love yourself, in spite of all your protestation. Love is one thing only. Love is God the Father, Himself in Person, as all our connections together. To love is to God. “Trying to love” is human pretending, otherwise known as lying.

The Beginning of Love. God did not design into you the ability to love of yourself. God designed you to contain all the fullness of God. – God is Love. Father at home in my heart comes first. Father between you and me comes second. And Father among us comes third.

Love does not begin until we first walk in the confident knowing that John 14:23 is fulfilled in our lives to full measure. Love does not begin until we live as sharing life with Father and Father sharing life with us. And even that is just the beginning of Love. Being filled with all the fullness of God is just the beginning of Love. Living and walking over time in everything found in the last chapter, “The Proving of Christ,” is just the beginning of Love.

Acknowledging God. Now, the title of this lesson is “Father Among Us.” Another way to say “Father Among Us” is “Love One Another.” These are two ways of describing the same thing.

And again, God is all-here-now, but God all-here-now causes no one to live or to love. It is the knowledge of God that is Life. And it is the acknowledgment of God that is Love. When I acknowledge that God alone is between you and me and that God alone is among our gathering together, and when I place that knowledge of God especially upon the most difficult frictions in relationships, then Love, that is, God-seen-and-known, becomes my reality.

The Costliest Thing. Here’s the thing. When you have done wrong against me, and when you show no indication of a desire to make it right or to restore a relationship with me, then for me to place “God Among Us” upon my thoughts of you is the costliest thing I have ever known. There is one reason alone why I would choose to lay down my life in that way for you and that is the Lamb slain for me.

And so we come back to that place inside that man hanging between heaven and earth where, by his willing action, God and I met together inside of Him, and I see that here is the source and the cause of the entire new creation. By Jesus’ action upon the cross, God is able to show Himself as Love among us.

A Significant Human Capacity. This course is an attempt to define the human according to how God designed and formed us both from the beginning and inside of Christ as the new creation. What we are considering is a massive and significant human capacity formed in us by God which few humans have ever known or used.

God designed us to think logically and to feel a wide range of emotions. He designed us to hear and to speak, to engage in conversation with one another through language. He designed us to see and to touch, to act and to do. These capacities are useful when we are by ourselves, but their real function is seen in our interactions together.

Levels of Interaction. Consider two capable and highly trained humans working together on a project that holds both of their devotion. Consider the communication and interaction going on between them. I think of my construction work with Jimmy Barkley and Amos Stoltzfus as examples of that level of interaction.

God designed the human to be capable of such high-level interaction – BUT it doesn’t come overnight or automatically, it comes by training and experience over years. We are now considering a level of interaction designed by God into the human that is far deeper – higher – greater than any interaction you and I have ever known.

Being Real Humans. It is my human nature to relate with all other humans THROUGH God the Father in all that relating through God the Father could possibly mean. We are not real humans, that is, we are not functioning as who and what we are, until we are using this capacity of interaction to full measure. Yet we have never known of it before.

Consider a conversation between two and all the functions and capacities of the human form, spirit, soul, and physic, that are involved in making language, speech, hearing, knowing one another, etc., happen. Your big toe is not involved in conversation, but your face muscles are.

The Ability to “Love.” We could write a list of all the human parts involved in a conversation and describe the involvement of each part. I know we would be astonished to see how incredible our ability to participate in a conversation really is.

Take that thought, of the many human abilities and the function of many human parts, all working together to allow us to speak together, and transfer it over to an entirely brand new human function, one which we have never known. And that is the ability to “God”, that is, to “Love” one another.

I am writing seven large textbooks as an entire field of the study of God and the human sharing the same form together. To study the human capacity to “LOVE,” that is, to place God among us, would take a similar number of textbooks, which I could not write at present, because I know almost nothing about the subject.

The Ability to Learn. I grew up in a house being built and I had a natural inclination towards construction, though I didn’t really know that. But when I walked on the construction job with Jimmy Barkley in 1975 at age 18, I had a lot to learn. Fast forward to 1992, at age 35, just 17 years later, at the first Graham River Tabernacle raising, and you will see the outcome of intensive training, practice, and experience.

The entire next section of this course, seven chapters, is titled “Human Expression.” The underlying foundation for each topic in that section is that humans are made to LEARN. This is a big deal. And thus, when Jesus said, “Learn of Me,” we now see that concept as an even bigger deal.

Entering First Grade. What I am trying to do is to capture somehow the vast extent of learning, a capacity God designed into our human nature, that we undergo to function in full maturity as God revealed, that is, to LOVE reciprocally. This function and this learning begins only with the complete and continuous acknowledgment of sharing life with God. And even though I have been writing about sharing life with God for 16 years now, actually, I feel as if I have just stepped hesitantly into first grade in this vast new field of learning.

Could I build a rocket ship and fly to the moon? Theoretically, yes, if I were trained, but right now, no, I don’t know how. Could I Love you as God between us? Theoretically, yes, if I were trained, but right now, no, I don’t know how.

Ignorant of Love. What would happen if I tried to build a rocket right now? I would kill myself in a fiery end along with anyone else nearby. What would happen if I tried to Love you at some level of Church commitment right now? I would kill you and myself and anyone else around. Don’t talk to me about Love. I know humans in community, and I know that you do not love.

The one person who cannot be taught is the one who insists that they already know and can do all inside a field of study or practice they have never entered. The only way you and I could ever learn God-Love between us is to begin with the certainty that we are ignorant of such a thing.

Developing a Capacity. When I was in first grade, I could not read or comprehend War and Peace or Don Quixote. Twenty-four years later, I could not only read and understand both, but enjoy them immensely – BUT it would be another thirty years before I could read War and Peace again and grasp the depths of meaning found in an interaction with Tolstoy.

In first grade, I had the same capacity inherent in my human makeup that could read War and Peace at the deepest levels of understanding fifty-four years later. Yet that capacity was fully undeveloped. I have now the capacity inherent in my human makeup to reciprocate God with you and with many. After fifty years or so of training and experience, I might be able to do it.

Just Like the Lord Jesus. Though when He was twelve, Jesus had the capacity inside His makeup to join Father and us together inside the agony of His own soul, He certainly was not ready to do so. It would be another 21 years of development and experience before God knew that His Son was ready.

Though being a Son, He learned submission to what was spoken by [giving thanks in] all the circumstances, good or bad, acting upon Him. And having been brought to full completion and perfection, He became the causation of and responsibility for age-unfolding salvation to all who are hearing Him (Hebrews 5:8-9).

Though we have the capacity to reciprocate God with one another, we must follow the same path Jesus walked to become the visible expression of that Love.